How Bias and Stigma Undermine Healthcare

Anthropologist Janelle Taylor got it right when she observed that, “Physicians’ medical knowledge is no less cultural for being real, just as patients’ lived experiences and perspectives are no less real for being cultural.”

More than ten years on, her essay, Confronting ‘Culture’ in Medicine’s ‘Culture of No Culture’ (Acad. Med. 2003;78:555–559), remains one of the most penetrating analyses of one of healthcare’s most challenging issues: practitioner bias and how it affects patient outcomes.

Remembering Lee Lipsenthal

The holistic/integrative medical community lost one of its leading lights, with the passing of Dr. Lee Lipsenthal on Sept. 20 at the age of 54. Clinician, pioneer, educator, agitator, rock & roller…..Lee was a loving and beloved man whose passion to help others, whose love of life, whose venturesome spirit touched and transformed many peoples’ lives. A dedicated husband, father and friend, Lee spent decades teaching all those around him how to live with vigor. In his passing, he’s taught us how to die with grace.